Posted by Nick Edwards on June 27, 1999 at 09:01:28:
In Reply to: Re: Unspiek, Baron Boddissey - any thoughts? posted by Dan Gunter on June 27, 1999 at 07:59:33:
Dan wrote:
I would guess that Vance largely agrees with Boddissy in regard to the "meaningless pretensions of intellectual elites"; but I don't see how that makes Vance a conservative of any stripe...etc
u are in every way correct, it is no reflection on his politics.
Boddissey is probably stating Vance's views here, I agree. I don't want to bore you all with this but as an amateur scholar of Vance the role of Boddisey is of great interest to me. I know you are not going to believe me but i have no fixed opinion, though i have some strong suspicions. If i seem provocative occaisionaly i apologise - but i do want to get access to all of you're ideas.
Dan also said:
Intellectual elites can be liberal, conservative, radical, or apparently apolitical. Currently, some (many?) conservatives portray the "intellectual elite" of the United States as liberal. I am not sure that the description is fair in any sense, but I'm quite certain that it's inaccurate on a structural level: if the "intellectual elite" is equivalent to "academia" (and that seems to be the conservative argument, to the extent that I want to characterize anyone's argument), then I would contend that the "intellectual elite" is, in generaly, deeply conservative, implicated in and replicating the patterns of wealth and capitalism that make permit them to live off of the labor of others. (Yes, that's probably a Marxist reading.)
I would say however, that Vance precisely defines the elite he is referring too in the quotation, and Dan's ideas concerning intellectual elites are of a more general interest.
Nice to see old Marx quoted, it doesnt happen much in England any more, unless jokingly of course (though not in the presence of a Russian, or cuban etc).